It has been suggested that highly social mammals, such as naked mole rats and humans, are long-lived due to neoteny (the prolongation of youth). In both species, aging cannot operate as a mechanism facilitating natural selection because the pressure of this selection is strongly reduced due to ) a specific social structure where only the "queen" and her "husband(s)" are involved in reproduction (naked mole rats) or) substituting fast technological progress for slow biological evolution (humans). Lists of numerous traits of youth that do not disappear with age in naked mole rats and humans are presented and discussed. A high resistance of naked mole rats to cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular and brain diseases, and many infections explains why their mortality rate is very low and almost age-independent and why their lifespan is more than 30 years, versus 3 years in mice. In young humans, curves of mortality versus age start at extremely low values. However, in the elderly, human mortality strongly increases. High mortality rates in other primates are observed at much younger ages than in humans. The inhibition of the aging process in humans by specific drugs seems to be a promising approach to prolong our healthspan. This might be a way to retard aging, which is already partially accomplished via the natural physiological phenomenon neoteny.

a b s t r a c tSince the times of the Bible, an extract of black cumin seeds was used as a medicine to treat many human pathologies. Thymoquinone (2-demethylplastoquinone derivative) was identified as an active antioxidant component of this extract. Recently, it was shown that conjugates of plastoquinone and penetrating cations are potent mitochondria-targeted antioxidants effective in treating a large number of age-related pathologies. This review summarizes new data on the antioxidant and some other properties of membrane-penetrating cationic compounds where 2-demethylplastoquinone substitutes for plastoquinone. It was found that such a substitution significantly increases a window between anti-and prooxidant concentrations of the conjugates. Like the original plastoquinone derivatives, the novel compounds are easily reduced by the respiratory chain, penetrate through model and natural membranes, specifically accumulate in mitochondria in an electrophoretic fashion, and strongly inhibit H 2 O 2 -induced apoptosis at pico-and nanomolar concentrations in cell cultures. At present, cationic demethylplastoquinone derivatives appear to be the most promising mitochondria-targeted drugs of the quinone series.

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V. A. Sadovnichii et al. zations to study some of extreme phenomena in space related to astrophysics, astroparticle physics, space physics, and space biology. The primary goals of this experiment are to study: -Ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) in the energy range of the Greizen-ZatsepinKuzmin (GZK) cutoff; -Ultraviolet (UV) transient luminous events in the upper atmosphere; -Multi-wavelength study of gamma-ray bursts in visible, UV, gamma, and X-rays; -Energetic trapped and precipitated radiation (electrons and protons) at low-Earth orbit (LEO) in connection with global geomagnetic disturbances; -Multicomponent radiation doses along the orbit of spacecraft under different geomagnetic conditions and testing of space segments of optical observations of space-debris and other space objects; -Instrumental vestibular-sensor conflict of zero-gravity phenomena during space flight. This paper is directed towards the general description of both scientific goals of the project and scientific equipment on board the satellite. The following papers of this issue are devoted to detailed descriptions of scientific instruments.

The response to stress involves the activation of pathways leading either to protection from the stress origin, eventually resulting in development of stress resistance, or activation of the rapid death of the organism. Here we hypothesize that mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (mtROS) play a key role in stress-induced programmed death of the organism, which we called “phenoptosis” in 1997. We demonstrate that the synthetic mitochondria-targeted antioxidant SkQ1 (which specifically abolishes mtROS) prevents rapid death of mice caused by four mechanistically very different shocks: (a) bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) shock, (b) shock in response to intravenous mitochondrial injection, (c) cold shock, and (d) toxic shock caused by the penetrating cation C12TPP. Importantly, under all these stresses mortality was associated with a strong elevation of the levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines and administration of SkQ1 was able to switch off the cytokine storms. Since the main effect of SkQ1 is the neutralization of mtROS, this study provides evidence for the role of mtROS in the activation of innate immune responses mediating stress-induced death of the organism. We propose that SkQ1 may be used clinically to support patients in critical conditions, such as septic shock, extensive trauma, cooling, and severe infection by bacteria or viruses.

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